The Conservatives’ pledge to ‘scale [social impact bonds] up in the future’, repeated recently by the prime minister, will likely receive a mixed reception.

However, as the CEO of a social business providing public services I remain enthusiastic about SIBs. In a time of austerity they offer opportunities to deliver co-designed, preventative, and user-led services. At the same time they offer significant downstream savings for local authorities and other commissioners.

Today’s toughest social challenges, from children in care to dementia, require ambitious solutions. If we are willing to look beyond the perceived complexity and bureaucracy, SIBs can provide some of the answers we need.

Catch22 is exploring the possibility of the world’s first gang SIB in partnership with West Midlands Police which demonstrates this potential.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks as to whether Rikers Island was a success or failure and what that means for the SIB ‘market’. You can read the Huffington Post learning and analyses from investors and the Urban Institute as to the benefits and challenges of this SIB. But I think the success and failure discussion fails to recognise the differences in objectives and approaches between SIBs. So I’d like to elaborate on one of these differences, and that’s the attitude towards continuous adaptation of the service delivery model. Some SIBs are established to test whether a well-defined program will work with a particular population. Some SIBs are established to develop a service delivery model – to meet the needs of a particular population as they are discovered.

A group of members of Japan’s legislative house, the National Diet, are seeking to secure a draft law to use dormant bank accounts to set up a Big Society Capital-style organisation in the country in a move that could transfer more than €500m per annum into the social investment sector.

Big Society Capital is the UK’s pioneering social financial institution that was launched with a £600m (€767.7m) investment fund in April 2012 from dormant bank accounts. It acts as a wholesaler that makes loans to or invests in social sector organisations.